Ukraine Books

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

Daniel Mendelsohn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 95 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost is the deeply personal account of a search for one family among his larger family, the one barely spoken of, only to say they were "killed by the Nazis." Mendelsohn, even as a boy, was always the one interested in his family's history, but when he came upon a set of letters from his great uncle Schmiel, pleading for help from his American relatives as the Nazi grip on the lives of Jews in their Polish town became tighter and tighter, he set out to find what had happened to that lost family. The result is both memoir and history, an ambitious and gorgeously meditative detective story that takes him across the globe in search of the lost threads of these few almost forgotten lives.

A whole culture lies behind the story Mendelsohn tells, and a lifetime of reading as well. For our Grownup School feature, he has given us a tour of some of the books behind his own, in a list he calls 10 Great Novels of Family History, the Holocaust, New York Jewish Life (And Other Things That Helped Me Write My Book). And you can watch his own moving introduction to the book in this short video:

Watch Daniel Mendelsohn introduce The Lost: high bandwidth or low bandwidth

Panther vs T-34: Ukraine 1943 (Duel)

Robert Forczyk

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Small but excellent book on armored warfare. 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

"Panther vs. T-34" gives readers the story of the epic showdown between two legendary tanks. The Russian T-34 met the German panther for the first time in the brutal battles in Southern Russia and the Ukraine. By the end of 1943, the flawed but powerful panthers had destroyed droves of Soviet tanks, but ultimately Soviet strenght prevailed. The book is thin, but contains quite a bit of information in a very readable form. The production of the vechicles is described as are the armored battles in which they faced each other. Additional features include brief descriptions of tank commanders and two interesting computer generated images of the tanks targeting one another. The book has numerous photos of the vechicles, including some I haven't noticed in other books. There is only one piece of artwork depicting an engagement, but it is very well done (much more detailed than the one featured in the "Duel" book featuring the firefly and tiger I). Overall, I recommend it to anyone interested in World War II armored vechiles or the epic tragedy called the Eastern Front.

Editorial Review:

Robert A. Forczyk provides a riveting and intense description of the design and development of these two deadly opponents, the Panther and the T-34, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses and describing their tactics, weaponry and training. Moreover he gives an insight into the lives of the tank crews themselves, who were caught up in the largest land conflict of World War II, in some of the most important engagements in the history of warfare.

Innovative digital artwork and first-person perspectives place the reader in the midst of a duel between the titans of the Soviet and German armed forces in a ruthless and relentless death match that would determine the war on the Eastern Front and, indeed, the fate of Nazi Germany.

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

Svetlana Alexievich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Nonsensical and Disappointing 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

After the excellent reviews I read on Amazon, I was very excited to get this book. However, I was very disappointed, as it is stream of consciousness ramblings that often don't make any sense. To be sure, there are a few riveting excerpts throughout the book, but most of it consists of tangents unrelated to Chernobyl. I was expecting accounts of people who had witnessed the disaster and how their lives were affected afterward. It is not nearly that straightforward. Much of it is nonsensical and surreal. For example, there is a section near the beginning of the book that just has a list of quotes from the survivors, with no context. For example, "But now we're free. The harvest is rich. We live like barons." Next, "The only thing I have is a cow. I'd hand her in, if only they don't make another war. How I hate war!" followed by "Here we have the war of wars--Chernobyl!" then, "And the cuckoo is cuckooing, the magpies are chattering, roes are running. Will they reproduce--who knows? One morning, I looked out in the garden, the boars were digging..." I'm not sure if it's a misguided attempt to be poetic or dramatic, but in the end it doesn't make sense and doesn't leave much of an impression.

Editorial Review:

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quarters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of the tragedy. Journalist Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the meltdown---from innocent citizens to firefighters to those called in to clean up the disaster---and their stories reveal the fear, anger, and uncertainty with which they still live. Comprised of interviews in monologue form, Voices from Chernobyl is a crucially important work, unforgettable in its emotional power and honesty.

Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust

Miron Dolot

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

the holocaust that Hollywood will never acknowledge 5 out of 5 stars.
29 of 33 people found this review helpful.

When Hitler was asked about the possible negative consequences of the "final solution" in gassing all the remaining Jews in the world, he is reported to have responded by asking the question of "Who remembers the Armenians" who were killed by the "young Turks" at the end of the Ottoman Empire. While the numbers are in dispute, the reality is that over a million were killed outright or died of hunger during the campaign to exterminate the Armenians. But the real hidden holocaust took place over a decade later, when the Communist jackals running the "Evil Empire" in Moscow set about to eliminate the Ukrainians by systematic starvation, in far greater numbers than Hitler was able to accomplish with his ovens in concentration camps all over Europe.
Whoever Miron Dolot is, since he wrote this under a pseudonym for some reason, he lived a horror for many years that is incomprehensible for normal human beings. His description of the day-to-day struggle to exist under a system so evil that it boggles the imagination was very eloquent. Dolot talks about the neighbors who starved to death, families who engaged in cannibalism in order to survive, mothers committing suicide after the last of their children had died from malnutrition, frozen bodies stacked like firewood, roads littered with the remains of those who died trying to find a kernel of corn to ingest, and many other horrors that bring tears to your eyes. The Soviets did everything they could do to kill their opposition, including killing dogs and cats to keep them from becoming the last remaining food source for farmers who had no other option to stay alive. Even birds were shot from the trees to keep them from the starving peasants. But it was not limited to the Ukrainians; just ask the relatives of the millions of Chechens, Ingushetian's, and others who wanted independence and were rewarded with death in Soviet concentration camps called Gulags. Most of this story deals with a small Ukrainian village, but it is a microcosm of what happened in the Communist utopia under Stalin. Some of the stories from those who returned to the village after the horrors of being transported in cattle cars and escaped from the gulags are no different than the pictures of the same form of transport shown in many Holocaust movies.
But this story is far better than many of the holocaust films we have seen from Hollywood that concentrated on the one committed by Hitler. And why have we not seen this book on film to put all of the holocausts committed in the last century in context? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that McCarthyism still exists in its original form, when the communists controlled Hollywood in the 30's and apologists like Walter Duranty of the New York Times, who carries the label of "Stalin's Apologist" won a Pulitzer prize for his misreporting from Moscow about how great Stalin was. Ken Billingsley and his masterful book "Hollywood Party" shows that the real "blacklist" existed when loyal Americans veered from Moscow's party line, and explains Ronald Reagan's contempt for the communists who controlled his union until he won election to rid the union of these lice.
This is a great book. Hopefully someone like Mel Gibson will convert this to film for those who do not read, but are mislead by the Hollywood elite who condemn the USA and would have lasted two minutes under the Stalinist regime they glorify.

Editorial Review:

An eyewitness account of the forced collectivization of Russian agriculture in 1929-1931 and the ensuing famine in the Ukraine, brought about by Stalin's command.

The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine

Robert Conquest

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Harvest of Sorrow is the first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932 the Soviet Communist Party struck a double blow at the Russian peasantry: dekulakization, the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families, and collectivization, the abolition of private ownership of land and the concentration of the remaining peasants in party-controlled "collective" farms. This was followed in 1932-33 by a "terror-famine," inflicted by the State on the collectivized peasants of the Ukraine and certain other areas by setting impossibly high grain quotas, removing every other source of food, and preventing help from outside--even from other areas of the Soviet Union--from reaching the starving populace. The death toll resulting from the actions described in this book was an estimated 14.5 million--more than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I.
Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, The Harvest of Sorrow is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history.

Alicia

Alicia Appleman-Jurman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 124 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Irrefutable Eye Witness to the Holocaust 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This eye witness account of the holocaust in Poland is so horrific it would be too depressing to read, if it weren't for the author's lucid, straight forward prose. Alicia Jurman was 13 years old when she fought for survival against literally impossible odds in southeastern Poland and witnessed the destruction of her entire family, friends and neighbors. Her survival was accomplished through truly incredible pluck, strength of character, resourcefulness, and unbelievable good luck.
We already know (or should know) all about the horrors of the holocaust: the depth of depravity to which the human soul can sink; and we know that to forget this worst of all possible nightmares is to face another genocide in our lifetime (we already have in Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia, and elsewhere).
What distinguishes "Alicia: My Story" despite the unspeakable horror is this horror as viewed through the eyes of a girl who simply refuses to give in and give up. She is an amazingly strong girl who used everything she had to survive. And she tells the story in a matter of fact way that propels the narrative forward and keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what happens next.
If one has never been exposed to what went on during World War Two, this excellent book is the perfect place to start.

Editorial Review:

After losing her entire family to the Nazis at age 13, Alicia Appleman-Jurman went on to save the lives of thousands of Jews, offering them her own courage and hope in a time of upheaval and tragedy. Not since The Diary of Anne Frank has a young voice so vividly expressed the capacity for humanity and heroism in the face of Nazi brutality. HC: Bantam.

The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, Second edition

Andrew Wilson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Recent Historical Perspective 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Although the book spans a long period of time, it provides the most useful detail on the post independence period that has had the most impact on the US and the world post Soviet Union.

In that regard, the author does capture some of the challenges in the current situation and the importance of the battle of a westward looking nation that is the second largest in Europe. But in Ukraine in the post Orange Revolution, one does hear Ukrainian spoken more whereas under the Soviets, jail time for doing so was possible.

The book doesn't provide the detail on some of the controversial aspects such as the battle for survivial against collectivization and the Soviet man made famine that Robert Conquest documented in his book "Harvest of Sorrow." The impact of the Soviet murder of SEVEN to TEN million people, 25% of the nation's population, has left a scar on the nation that is only being discussed openly for the first time. A small memorial in the center of Kiev has been erected and certainly is less costly than any US based memorial to the victims of Stalinism.

Although the country has achieved its independence there are many problems in addressing its history as its had to fight external and internal enemies who have often sided with invaders. In the case of Western Ukraine, WWII brought about the first opportunity to rise up against the slaughter and genocide of millions of their countrymen in 1933. The NKVD, and its secret police predecessors was comprised largely of local Jewish nonprofessionals. There was no mercy shown to their neighbors in imposing communism and the following genocidal famine that followed. The story of the NKVD and of the communists secret police has never been told in Ukraine. Someday it will.

During WWII, Jewish doctors joined the Ukrainian partisan army to fight against the Soviets and Germans. As a country fighting the two biggest enemies of freedom in the 20th century, it wasn't an easy task but lasted into the 1950s.

As the accounting for the Soviet mass murder has hardly even started. It's unfortunate that the desire to build a memorial to its victims in the US would meet opposition. Particularly when the story of those who enforced and were complicit in the genocide on behalf of the Soviet evil have yet to be brought to account.

Editorial Review:

An account of Ukraine and its people. Andrew Wilson focuses on the complex relations between Ukraine and Russia and explains the different versions of the past propagated by Ukrainians and Russians. He also examines the continuing debates over identity, culture, and religion in Ukraine since its independence in 1991. This second edition is updated and includes coverage of the Yushchenko government and the "Gongadze affair".

Love In A World Of Sorrow: A Teenage Girl's Holocaust Memoirs

Fanya Gottesfeld Heller

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Important as both a family history and more broadly, as a contribution to the Holocaust record, this memoir, unflinchingly told more that four decades after it occured, details what can happen in the most extreme and dire of human circumstances. "The unrelenting fear of death and gnawing pain of hunger led to acts of desperation among many who survived; some stole, others lied and schemed. Still others took comfort in intimate relationships that might be considered illicit or misguided in ordinary times. It was not all pure and righteous, but it happened."

Also a story of interfaith compassion, the author and her family were hidden by the efforts of a non-Jewish couple and a sympathetic Ukrainian militiaman at the risk of their own lives. Their developing relationship and the harrowing events that followed lend the book an immediacy and jolt so many years later. Fanya Heller's subtle depiction of her parent's knowledge that it was a non-Jew's love for their daughter that had moved him to hide them; their embarrassment and ultimate acceptance of the situation, leads us to wonder how we would have acted under the same circumstances – as father, mother, or daughter.

The Legacy of Chernobyl

Zhores A. Medvedev

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A little too technical for me. 3 out of 5 stars.
21 of 29 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book hoping for a general introduction to the explosion, its causes and its aftermath. The book does contain such information, but it's buried underneath a heavy layer of technical detail that can be, at times, mind-numbingly boring. Unless you are a nuclear engineer or otherwise interested in the minutiae of the reactor's workings, I'd skip this book.

Is there really No Breathing Room? 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 20 people found this review helpful.

I thought this was a very good novel. I used this on several occations as a document for research papers I have wrote on the subject of Nuclear power and Chernobyl. The author is very accurate and shows the world what goes on behind the scenes.

Fantastic book 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book takes you right into the Chernobyl disaster. From the bungling government and perverse incentives placed on the nuclear engineer teams which made it a disaster just waiting to happen, to the clean up, evacuation (largely also botched) and health effects of the nuclear fallout.

It is amazingly detailed. The author even discusses wind patterns during the disaster which effected what areas were worst effected by what radioactive material (as the disaster progressed the wind AND the composition of the radioactive dust changed). I can honestly say that I was never really bored even though it gets technical in places.

The author's writing style actually makes a reader feel that they are there when the Reactor explodes... not to mention (for one example out of many)sharing frustration at the government's incompetence when they delay an evacuation for half a day thereby increasing the populations poisoning over ten-fold.

Highly Recommended.

Editorial Review:

On the morning of April 26, 1986, a Soviet nuclear plant at Chernobyl (near Kiev) exploded, pouring radioactivity into the environment and setting off the worst disaster in the history of nuclear energy. Now a former Soviet scientist gives a comprehensive account of the catastrophe. Photographs.

Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine

Omer Bartov

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Erased, Omer Bartov uncovers the rapidly disappearing vestiges of the Jews of western Ukraine, who were rounded up and murdered by the Nazis during World War II with help from the local populace. What begins as a deeply personal chronicle of the Holocaust in his mother's hometown of Buchach--in former Eastern Galicia--carries him on a journey across the region and back through history. This poignant travelogue reveals the complete erasure of the Jews and their removal from public memory, a blatant act of forgetting done in the service of a fiercely aggressive Ukrainian nationalism.

Bartov, a leading Holocaust scholar, discovers that to make sense of the heartbreaking events of the war, he must first grapple with the complex interethnic relationships and conflicts that have existed there for centuries. Visiting twenty Ukrainian towns, he recreates the histories of the vibrant Jewish and Polish communities who once lived there-and describes what is left today following their brutal and complete destruction. Bartov encounters Jewish cemeteries turned into marketplaces, synagogues made into garbage dumps, and unmarked burial pits from the mass killings. He bears witness to the hastily erected monuments following Ukraine's independence in 1991, memorials that glorify leaders who collaborated with the Nazis in the murder of Jews. He finds that the newly independent Ukraine-with its ethnically cleansed and deeply anti-Semitic population--has recreated its past by suppressing all memory of its victims.

Illustrated with dozens of hauntingly beautiful photographs from Bartov's travels, Erased forces us to recognize the shocking intimacy of genocide.